The Last Watch:

  Edgar flew back against the wall, struck it hard with the back of his head and slowly slid down it, catching at his crotch with his hands.

  Then Gennady jumped me. He grabbed me across the chest with superhuman strength, pulled my head back with his free hand and bared his teeth …

  ‘Gena!’ Arina only said a single word, but the vampire’s fangs were instantly withdrawn. ‘Edgar asked for what he got. Calm down, Anton. Our grey friend was mistaken.’

  Edgar groaned as he rolled around the floor, clutching his crotch. I’d hit the right spot.

  ‘There hasn’t been any explosion,’ Arina continued. She got up and came towards us, then looked into my face. ‘Hey, Anton! Calm down. There hasn’t been any explosion!’

  I looked into her eyes. And nodded.

  She was telling the truth

  ‘What do you mean … there hasn’t …’ Edgar groaned from the corner.

  ‘I told you I didn’t like the idea,’ Arina said. ‘Even if I was still a Dark One, I wouldn’t have liked it! There hasn’t been any explosion. The criminals who stole a tactical nuclear warhead have repented and have returned it to the authorities. They are being interrogated at this very moment.’ She sighed. ‘And not very humanely, I’m afraid. There hasn’t been any explosion and there won’t be.’

  ‘Arina!’ Edgar had even stopped groaning. ‘Why? You could have just delayed it … for a guarantee …’

  ‘I can’t do things like that now,’ Arina explained, with a sweet smile. ‘Unfortunately, I just can’t. I told you at the beginning that I would cut out any acts of mass destruction with massive human casualties.’

  ‘Then why … did you let me start all this anyway …’ Edgar said, straightening up with difficulty. He gave me a glance filled with hate. ‘Bastard! You’ve … smashed everything up!’

  ‘You won’t need any of it for the next seventy-seven times,’ I replied spitefully. ‘Didn’t you notice the spell that Afandi flung at you?’

  Arina laughed.

  ‘So that’s it. That old joker Afandi. Yes, the next seventy-five times you can pester someone else, Edgar.’

  ‘Why did you do this?’ Edgar asked with pain in his voice.

  ‘So that what you said would sound convincing. Anton could have spotted a lie, even with the Cat on his neck. Saushkin, please let our guest go. He won’t fight any more. Boys always try to settle their disagreements by the most primitive methods …’

  Gennady reluctantly moved away from me and sat down on the floor with his legs crossed under him. I looked round for a chair that wasn’t a total wreck and sat down, deliberately not asking for permission. Arina went back to her own chair. Suddenly realising that he was the only one standing, and that he was clutching his own private parts, Edgar also took a seat.

  ‘All right, now everyone’s settled down and we can talk calmly,’ Arina said in the voice of the hostess at a literary salon who has just watched one poet pulling another’s curly hair. ‘Peace, peace and more peace! Anton, let me explain things to you. You understand that it’s far more difficult for me to lie than it is for Gennady or Edgar. We don’t want any atrocities, we’re not trying to destroy the world. We’re not trying to exterminate all human beings. All we’re doing is bringing the withdrawn back to life.’

  ‘Arina, what did they hook you with?’ I asked. ‘Someone you loved? A child?’

  For a moment I clearly saw sadness in Arina’s eyes.

  ‘A loved one … Yes, there was someone I loved, sorcerer. He was here for a while, and then gone. He didn’t even live out his human lifetime, he was killed … And I had a daughter. Earlier, before him. She died too. When she was only four … from plague. I wasn’t there with her, I arrived too late to save her. But not even the Crown will bring them back – they were people. Wherever they might have gone, there’s no way for us to reach them and no way back for them to come back.’

  ‘Then why …’ The question was left unfinished, hanging in the air.

  Gennady gave a quiet, hoarse laugh.

  ‘She’s got ideals! She’s a Light One now, like you. She only kills for noble reasons … ‘

  ‘Hush, bloodsucker!’ said Arina, and her eyes flashed. Then she immediately continued in a steady voice: ‘He’s telling the truth, Anton. I became a Light One by my own deliberate choice. On the dictates of my reason, not my heart, you might say. I’m sick of the Dark Ones. I’ve never seen anything good come of them. I was thinking of joining the Inquisition, but I had too many old charges to answer. And I don’t like them anyway, the smug hypocrites … I beg your pardon, Edgar, that doesn’t apply to you, of course. I went straight to Siberia that time. And I lived in Tomsk, a nice quiet town. It inclines you towards the Light. I worked for a living the way I used to, as a local witch. I put an advertisement in the newspaper, and when they came from the Watch to check me I pretended to be a quack. It’s not hard for me to wind the average watchman round my little finger. And then I realised that I was only doing good deeds. I only sent husbands back to their wives if I could see their love was still alive, that it would be better for everyone. I healed sicknesses. I found people who were lost. I made people younger again … just a little bit. The important thing there was to use just a little bit of magic: all the rest is making people believe in themselves, making them live a healthy life. And not a single hex, not a single potion to send someone back to a woman he didn’t love … So I decided I’d had enough of playing Dark games. But do you know what it takes for a Dark One to change colour?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You have to think of something immense, something really important. It not as simple as “If you’ve done good deeds for a year, you become a Light One; if you’ve worked evil, you become a Dark One.” No. You have to do something that turns everything in you upside down. Something that will bleach white everything that came before, everything you did with your life … or simply cancel it out.’

  ‘Was Merlin caught out by his massacre of innocent children?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Arina said, nodding. ‘What else? He wanted so badly to create a kingdom of justice and nobility here on Earth, that was what he nurtured Arthur for. How can you be choosy about your methods in the cause of such a great idea? And suddenly the probability lines showed a child who would grow up and destroy the entire kingdom … I wasn’t alive then, so I don’t know what Merlin was thinking and what he wanted. But the very moment that Merlin decided to murder the innocent for the sake of his dream, the Great Light Magician died and the Great Dark Magician was born.’

  Uroboros again. Life in death and death in life.

  Could it all really have been so very simple for Arina? She was tired of being a Dark One, she was drawn to do good deeds – and so she became a Light One? She reformed, like the old woman Shapoklyak in the story, and changed sides …

  Or was there something else involved? For instance, the long and complicated relationship that bound her to Gesar? Those joint intrigues of theirs, when the Light Magician and the Dark Witch pursued the same goals? Had Gesar inclined her towards the Light, or had Arina realised that there wasn’t that much difference between her Darkness and Gesar’s Light?

  I didn’t know, and she wouldn’t answer me if I asked. Just as she wouldn’t answer if I asked whether Gesar and Zabulon had known her plans in advance and were playing their own game, allowing the ‘Last Watch’ to get closer to Merlin’s legacy.

  ‘But how did you and Edgar get together? If it’s not a secret, that is.’

  Edgar didn’t say anything. He was whispering – obviously trying to heal his injuries as best he could.

  ‘Why should it be a secret?’ said Arina, looking at her comrade-in-arms and, apparently, lover. ‘He managed to track me down after all. It had become a matter of principle for him. Well, he tracked me down, but by that time he wasn’t interested in his career any more. His wife had been killed, he had found out about Merlin’s last artefact and he wanted to get his hands on i
t. And the quickest way to do that was to become a Higher One, and not simply a Higher One but a zero-point magician, like Merlin. Edgar thought I could reconstruct the Fuaran. He overestimated my abilities a little there. But I liked what he told me about the Crown. So the two of us joined forces.’

  I nodded. That sounded like the way it must have happened. Edgar, already obsessed by the idea of reaching the artefact, had found Arina. Together they had co-opted Saushkin, who was thirsting for vengeance, into their ‘Last Watch’. And they had set to work. An Inquisitor who had access to an absolutely vast repository of magical amulets; a highly intelligent witch who had become a Light One; a Higher Vampire who was going insane with grief for his son and his wife …

  A sorry sort of crew they made.

  But a terrible one.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid that the Crown will become your mistake, Arina? In the same way that Mordred was Merlin’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am a bit afraid of that … Well then, did we make a mistake by taking you prisoner? Have you found a way to get hold of the Crown of All Things?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Merlin deliberately confused the question of the seventh level. Only a zero-point Other can enter the kingdom of the dead.’

  ‘The withdrawn,’ Gennady corrected me without any malice in his voice. ‘Not the dead, the withdrawn.’

  Why was that such a sore point with him? Because he wasn’t alive?

  ‘I think it’s impossible too,’ Arina said, nodding. ‘If I had the Fuaran, I could have raised Edgar to the zero-point level. But without the book it’s difficult. I remembered some things, I managed to rewrite a few others, and somehow or other I raised him to the Higher level. But I obviously don’t have the skill to rival the Fuaran … So what were your thoughts?’

  ‘The Crown of All Things is on the fifth level,’ I said. ‘You could have taken it two weeks ago!’

  Arina screwed up her eyes and peered at me. And I started telling her all the nonsense I’d fed to Edgar and Gennady in the plane. About taking a step back. About the head and the tail. About the golem.

  ‘You’re probably lying, I suppose,’ Arina said pensively. ‘It all fits so well … But it’s a bit simple for old Merlin, don’t you think? Well?’

  ‘I think he’s lying too,’ Gennady suddenly put in, backing her up. He hadn’t shown any sign of trusting me in the plane either. ‘We ought to have taken the daughter …’

  ‘Gena, don’t you dream even in your worst nightmare of ever touching that little girl!’ Arina said in a quiet voice. ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Gennady, suddenly changing his tune.

  ‘Well then, sorcerer, are you telling the truth or lying?’ Arina asked, looking into my eyes. ‘Eh?’

  ‘The truth?’ I said, leaning forward. The only thing that could save me now was fury … and frankness, of course. ‘Who do you take me for? Merlin? How should I know the truth? They hung this brute round my neck, threatened to blow up my wife and daughter, together with half of Moscow, and then ordered me to tell them how to get the artefact! How do I know if I’m right or not? I thought about it. It seems to me that this could be the right answer! But nobody, including me, can give you any guarantees!’

  ‘Just what do want from me, my darling cut-throats … maybe I should play “Murka” for you?’ Edgar said suddenly.

  I didn’t immediately realise that it was a joke. He didn’t often manage that.

  ‘But there is something to this lie of his, after all,’ Edgar added, giving me a hostile look. ‘It sounds like the truth.’

  Arina sighed. She spread her hands and said:

  ‘Well then, all we can do now is check it. Let’s go.’

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Edgar promised to take the Cat off me.’

  ‘If you promised, then take it off,’ Arina told him after a moment’s thought. ‘But don’t forget, Anton, that you may be powerful now but there are three of us, and we’re as strong as you are. Don’t even think about pulling any tricks.’

  CHAPTER 6

  GENNADY WAS DRIVING. Apparently Edgar and Arina thought that they could restrain me better than he could if I attempted to escape or attack them. I was sitting on the back seat with Edgar on my left and Arina on my right.

  But I didn’t attempt to attack or to escape – they had too many trump cards up their sleeves. Now that they had taken the Cat off my neck, the skin where the fluffy strap had been was scratched and itchy.

  ‘They’re guarding the Crown much more seriously now,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you afraid of a massacre, Arina? Will your conscience be able to handle it?’

  ‘We’ll manage without bloodshed,’ Arina replied confidently. ‘As far as that’s possible.’

  I doubted very much that it was possible, but I didn’t try to argue. I looked out in silence at the suburbs we were driving through, as if I was hoping to see Lermont or his black deputy and at least be able to warn them with a look or a gesture …

  If I tried to get away, they would almost certainly catch me. I had to wait.

  * * *

  The day was just declining into evening. It was the busiest time for tourists, but today Edinburgh seemed quite different from two weeks earlier. The people on the streets seemed somehow muted and joyless, the sky was obscured by a light haze and the birds circling overhead seemed alarmed by something.

  So apparently everything in the world could sense the approaching cataclysm, including people and birds …

  The cellphone in my pocket jangled. Edgar started and tensed up. I looked enquiringly at Arina.

  ‘Answer it, but be discreet,’ she said.

  I looked at the phone. It was Svetlana.

  ‘Hello.’

  As ill luck would have it, the connection was excellent. You would never have suspected that we were thousands of kilometres apart.

  ‘Are you still working, Anton?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m driving in the car.’

  Arina was watching me closely. She was bound to be able to hear every word that Svetlana said.

  ‘I deliberately didn’t ring. They told me something had happened – some terrorists or other, pumped full of magic – is that why you’re late?’

  A faint spark of hope began to glimmer in my breast. I wasn’t late yet! Svetlana couldn’t have been expecting me home from work so early.

  ‘Yes, of course that’s why,’ I said.

  Come on now, guess! Use magic! You can find out where I am now. Raise the alarm. Warn Gesar, and he’ll get in touch with Lermont. If the Edinburgh Night Watch are expecting an attack, that will be the end of the ‘Last Watch’.

  ‘Make sure you don’t get stuck for too long,’ Svetlana told me. ‘Surely you have enough people working for you to manage all these things? Don’t take everything on yourself. Okay?’

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ I said.

  ‘Is Semyon with you?’ Svetlana asked casually.

  Before I could answer, Arina shook her head. Of course, if Svetlana suspected something, she could phone Semyon after I said yes.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m on my own. I’ve got a separate job to do.’

  ‘Do you want me to help? I’m getting a bit bored sitting at home,’ Svetlana said and laughed.

  Arina was alarmed and tense now.

  ‘Don’t be silly, this is nothing special,’ I said. ‘Just an inspection visit.’

  ‘As long as you’re sure,’ said Svetlana, sounding a bit disappointed. ‘Call me if you get completely stuck. Oi, Nadya’s trundling something around, bye …’

  She cut off the call and I started putting the phone away in my pocket. Looking straight into Arina’s relaxed face, I pressed three buttons on the phone: Incoming calls – Call last number – Off.

  That was all. I couldn’t risk leaving the phone switched on. Arina might hear the ringing tone from inside my pocket. Had the call gone through, had the international telephone network managed to process it before it was cancelled? I didn’
t know. I could only put my hope in the greed of the cellphone network operators – it was more profitable for them to put the call through and take the money for it from my account.

  And also, of course, I put my hope in Svetlana’s common sense. When her phone rang and then stopped again, she had to use magic, not try calling back. Arina and Edgar were far older than me. But for them a cellphone would always be a portable version of a cumbersome apparatus into which you had to shout: ‘Young lady! Young lady! Give me the Smolny Institute!’

  ‘She suspected something,’ Edgar said. ‘You shouldn’t have done that with the bomb … it didn’t have to be detonated, but at least we would have had a trump card in reserve!’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Arina. ‘Even if she did suspect something, they don’t have any time. Anton, give me that phone.’

  A glint of suspicion had appeared in her eyes. I gave her the cell without saying anything, handing it to her fastidiously with the tips of my fingers without touching the keys.

  Arina looked at the phone and saw that it was in waiting mode. She shrugged and switched it off completely.

  ‘Let’s do without any calls, all right? If you need to call anyone, you can ask me for my phone.’

  ‘I won’t bankrupt you?’

  ‘No, you won’t.’ Arina took out her own phone and dialled a number – not from the phone book, but the old way, pressing every key. She raised the phone to her ear and waited for an answer. When it came she said quietly: ‘It’s time. Go to work.’

  ‘Still haven’t run out of accomplices, then?’

  ‘They’re not accomplices, Anton, they’re hired hands. People can be perfectly effective allies if you equip them with a small number of amulets. Especially the kind that Edgar has.’

  I looked at the royal castle towering up in state above the city, crowning the remains of an ancient volcano now for ever extinct. Well, well, this was the second time I’d ended up in Edinburgh, and I still didn’t have time to visit its main tourist attraction …

  ‘And what have you prepared this time?’ I asked

  There was an idea flickering on the edge of my consciousness, scratching away at it like Schrödinger’s Cat. Something very important.